Coleen Nolan returned to the Loose Women panel yesterday (March 27), revealing the heartbreaking news that her sister Linda has been recently diagnosed with secondary cancer.

'It's difficult to know where to start,' Coleen said. 'About two and a half weeks ago, maybe three weeks ago, as you know my sister Linda – who was on the show recently – had an accident at home, she fell up the stairs – she never falls down the stairs, always up.

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'She actually broke her hip [...] she went to hospital and while they did the scan of her hip, they found secondary cancer.'

Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2006, but had been in remission for six years.

'They found a cyst attached to where the break was – her pelvic bone,' Coleen explained. 'So it was just earth shattering for us initially.

'She's incredible and what they have said is – and the reason I didn't come back – she didn't want anyone to know at the time. She didn't want it to be out there at the time. We all had to get our head around it.

'She wanted me to come back now, she had enough sitting around – get back to work. She's not ready to talk about it yet.'

Coleen continued: 'She's had to cancel all her future work for now. Her whole life had turned around, she'd had her great facelift, turned a corner from losing her husband… obviously had to cancel the work.'

Of returning to work on Loose Women, Coleen added: 'She saw the speculation about why I was off, which wasn't true – she didn't want people to start speculating about her.

'I didn't want to lie to any of you. I wouldn't be able to hold it together.

On her own reaction, Coleen said: 'I went through such terrible anger, I was angry at the world, angry at cancer, angry for her.

'I just thought it's so unfair, she's just got it all together, it's taken her ten years to finally get her life back and then it goes whack, here you go, now face this. So I was angry as well.

'The other reason I didn't come back was, because of all of that, I got a stress related allergy. So I got taken to hospital with that, they were frightened of anaphylactic shock. I thought, 'no-one wants to see that on the telly.'

She added: 'We'll all fight as a family and we'll all be there for her.'

Coleen admitted a text from Linda to the family was particularly upsetting.

'I think the thing that broke my heart, [Linda] sent a text [to the whole family] at the end of it she put, 'I'm so sorry, I feel so guilty to put you all through this again',' she revealed.

'She feels sorry for us, for putting us through it. But she's not. We'll all go through it together.

'The positive thing is, she's not dying. They haven't once said to her, "You're dying, you've got six months to live". What they've said is, "No it's not curable, it's in that one area and we can treat it forever". You might live longer than any of us. She wants to get that across.'